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Donald Trump stated he’ll nominate Wall Street investor and marketing campaign financier Howard Lutnick to steer his Commerce Department, tasking the billionaire with imposing the sweeping tariffs the president-elect has proposed to voters.
Lutnick, who’s the co-chair of Trump’s transition crew, had additionally been a contender to steer the Treasury Department within the new administration. He can also be the CEO of the funding agency Cantor Fitzgerald.
In an announcement launched Tuesday, Trump introduced that along with main the Commerce Department, Lutnick will even have “direct accountability” for the workplace of the U.S. Trade Representative.
If confirmed by the Senate, Lutnick can be chargeable for supporting U.S. companies and would play a central position in implementing Trump’s plan to impose sweeping tariffs on buying and selling companions. The president-elect has proposed a 60% tariff on Chinese imports and a common tariff of as much as 20%.
The Commerce Department has about 50,000 workers and a finances of $11 billion.
The 63-year-old billionaire investor, who has by no means held a authorities place earlier than, has staunchly defended these insurance policies and emerged as one in all Trump’s greatest cheerleaders in the course of the presidential marketing campaign, incomes prime talking spots at giant rallies, comparable to Madison Square Garden in New York.
“When was America nice? At the flip of the century, our economic system was in disaster! This was 125 years in the past,” Lutnick advised the group in New York. “We had no revenue tax. And all we had have been tariffs.
In latest days, Trump had been contemplating Lutnick for Treasury secretary, however infighting between the investor camp and people backing Scott Bessent, a hedge fund supervisor who was extensively seen as the highest decide, upended the choice course of .
Lutnick has earned the assist of Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur turned shut Trump adviser. Musk described Lutnick as a Treasury secretary who would “truly enact change,” in distinction to Bessent, who he dubbed “enterprise as ordinary.”
Beyond the place of Treasury secretary, which is an important financial job in a president’s administration, Trump has but to determine who will function director of his National Economic Council.
Before changing into a serious Trump donor, Lutnick gave cash to so-called institution Democrats and Republicans, together with Chuck Schumer and Jeb Bush.
Lutnick contributed to Hillary Clinton’s presidential bids in 2008 and 2016, hosted a fundraiser for her in 2015, and nonetheless considers the Clintons mates, noting that Bill Clinton and his daughter Chelsea got here to his firm’s profit day final September eleventh.
But Lutnick has additionally been near the president-elect for many years, even showing on Trump’s NBC present in 2008 The Celebrity Apprentice. Cantor Fitzgerald’s boss advised the Financial Times in October that he had donated greater than $10 million to Trump’s 2024 marketing campaign, had given one other $500,000 to the transition and had raised a complete of about $75 million .
